You may have heard the saying “Conversation is the new interface”.

And no, in a world of technology, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to start talking to each other more on a human-to-human, face-to-face level. Rather, it means that we will be talking more to robots, and artificial intelligence programs to help us get things done.

From shopping, scheduling, and finding information, chatbots have the opportunity of becoming your very own PA.

Although you may not be aware of it, chatbots have become the predominant way we interact with companies. Think about Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, and Facebook Messenger – yup, they’re all chatbots using artificial intelligence to stimulate human conversation and provide us with information, answers to queries, and more.

Startup Dave & Patrimonio have jumped in on the action – creating bespoke chatbots for various enterprises.

Aucklander Siddarth Dave launched the company in December 2017 with business partner Manolo Patrimonio with the mission to change the way companies interact and develop relationships with their customers. They’re all about giving people fast, and accurate solutions for their needs. Giving them information that’s all in one place, and making it clear and easy for them.

We got the chance to pick their brain on why they got into chatbot development and their thoughts on the future of artificial intelligence in NZ:

Why Chatbots?

“In today’s world of technology, it’s vital to be one step ahead and breaking boundaries. Businesses utilise and embrace technology to their advantage, so embracing a technology like chatbots is a way for businesses to stay ahead of the game. Chatbots are powerful tools with a lot of viable use cases and can automate tasks/processes traditionally done by us humans. Because of their sheer power and potential to be adopted widely by businesses, we’ve decided to get into developing chatbots.”

Do you think digital technologies such as chatbots, AR etc will grow in NZ?

“Absolutely. NZ’s a breeding ground for innovation as evident by the start-up culture and services specifically for start-ups. From our experience of working at corporates, NZ companies are not afraid to experiment with new technology; so the open mind-set to readily adopt digital tech is clearly there. Also, because there is tremendous capability and value that technologies such as chatbots and AR can provide in various industries and sectors (health, retail, travel, food & hospitality etc.), it’s only a matter of time before a number of NZ companies are playing in this space.”

What do you think about digital marketing, and its industry growth all over the globe and NZ?

“Digital marketing changed the whole landscape for business-to-customer communications by being a wider reaching and more efficient way to reach customers over traditional marketing methods (via connectivity enabled by household e-devices). It’s clear to see companies see potential value in digital marketing by implementing functions or business units to take advantage of data-driven marketing, social media marketing, campaign marketing etc.”

“The growth of digital marketing around the globe and in NZ makes it easier for businesses to not only market to more customers, but also target the customers that fit their ideal customer profile. With that said, traditional marketing like word-of-mouth still can uplift a company’s reputation significantly so utilising the two is a tactical way of doing modern business.”

How do you think chatbots will evolve in the future?

“A chatbot is an AI technology. We view AI as a powerful space to be in that offers technologies that could and will change the world we live in today. The scary thought is that you’d never know what you’ve been brought up to do and what you’ve been trained to do could be completely automated by a machine! Although dramatic, I think it illustrates the point that chatbots could evolve to where companies are using it to automate more and more processes because it essentially acts like a human – talk to you, schedule and book things for you, accept form details and so on.”